FIAF

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) this week released a report that said taxing people based on how many miles they drive is a possible option for raising new revenues and that these taxes could be used to offset the costs of highway maintenance at a time when federal funds are short.

Federal funds aren’t short you asshat. Federal spending is high.

“Do we do gas tax?” Conrad asked. “Do we move to some kind of an assessment that is based on how many miles vehicles go, so that we capture revenue from those who are going to be using the roads who aren’t going to be paying any gas tax, or very little, with hybrids and electric cars?”

They didn’t seem concerned when they were overcharging gas guzzelers which got low-mileage.

The report said miles driven is a larger factor in highway repairs than fuel consumption and suggested that having drivers pay for the real costs of highways “would involve imposing a combination of fuel taxes and per-mile charges.”

From the CBO report:

Although raising those [gasoline] taxes would bring in a larger amount of revenue, a more fundamental issue would remain:By themselves, fuel taxes cannot provide a strong incentive for people to avoid overusing high-ways – that is, to forgo trips for which the costs to themselves and others exceeds the benefits.

So, the goal of placing a tax on miles traveled is to get you to drive less. Nudging. The report states that the effect would be for people to move closer to work. The government is going to make you a better person. Trust them. They’re smarter than you. Commies always love moving everyone to the cities. It’s simply a more efficient use of space and the highway system. But there is more:

Charging users for the cost their travel imposes on society would create incentives for people to limit highway use to trips for which the benefits exceed the costs,thus reducing or eliminating overuse of highways and helping identify the economic value of investments in highways.

Currently we pay – on average – 2 cents per mile. The Federal Highway Administration estimates the cost “for congestion caused by automobiles” to be 10 cents. Yea, sure.

Judging from the estimates of the costs of highway use, a system that charged for all such costs would have most if not all motorists paying substantially more than they do now – perhaps several times more.

Included in the “cost” of using a highway? Pavement damage, congestion, accidents, and noise. Noise. That costs what? Congestion? Exactly how do our taxes go to relieve congestion?

Oh right. High speed rail. I forgot.

How much do they hope to squeeze out of us with this VMT tax? $60-$90 Billion.

That’s on top of the taxes you pay for gasoline (which is about .48 per gallon average).

The report explains that the tax could vary based on when and where you drive, which they’ll know because of the big brother GPS in your car. Twenty-mile drive through town during rush hour? That’s going to cost you $5. Twice a day, perhaps. Five days a week.

Don’t call it a tax, though. In the spirit of the Obama administration’s newspeak, let’s call it “kinetic economic operations against your wallet.” They are neither time-limited nor scope-limited. Democrats’ lust for the money you earn is unlimited.

My drive to work, when I’m working which is not much lately, is at best eighty miles round trip and at worst one hundred miles. A tax like this would kill us monetarily. And we don’t have the benefit of public transportation like city dwellers do.